Deathless Divide

By: Justina Ireland

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin, Jordan Cobb

The sequel to the New York Times best-selling epic Dread Nation is an unforgettable journey of revenge and salvation across a divided America.

After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother.

But nothing is easy when you’re a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to a protected village called Nicodemus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880s America.

What’s more, this safe haven is not what it appears - as Jane discovers when she sees familiar faces from Summerland amid this new society. Caught between mysteries and lies, the undead, and her own inner demons, Jane soon finds herself on a dark path of blood and violence that threatens to consume her.

But she won’t be in it alone.

Katherine Deveraux never expected to be allied with Jane McKeene. But after the hell she has endured, she knows friends are hard to come by - and that Jane needs her, too, whether Jane wants to admit it or not.

Watching Jane’s back, however, is more than she bargained for, and when they both reach a breaking point, it’s up to Katherine to keep hope alive - even as she begins to fear that there is no happily-ever-after for girls like her.

©2020 Justina Ireland (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Two narrators portray the dynamic relationship of the heroines in this compelling sequel to Dread Nation.... Bahni Turpin gives an engaging performance of the gritty and sarcastic Jane McKeene. Turpin adds increasing emotion to her tone as Jane becomes bent on killing a man who is causing death and destruction. Jordan Cobb effects the more refined expression of genteel Katherine, reflecting perfectly her onset of caring and self-questioning after witnessing Jane's near death. Themes of human experimentation and prejudice take a back seat to the tense action in this gripping audio." (AudioFile Magazine)

Outstanding!

The narration for this book was amazing!! I really hope there will be another book to continue with these characters, because I am emotionally connected to the two main characters!

Amazing Sequel

Wow. Ms. Ireland took us for a wild ride on this one.

Wherein Jane and Katherine become the best of friends, go on more adventuers. We have deaths, rebirths, apparently the vaccine works, but also, it does not work. We have a mad scientist on the loose, and vengeful bounty hunters on his trail, the East Coast has fallen, more racism and mysoginy. There are not-so-happy reunions, a whole lot of character development, more allies, and lots more death..

This was just fabulous. I loved the story, the characters, the narration with the added narrator was wonderful, and the ending left me wanting more, yet was completely satisfying. I loved this book and its predecessor and whether or not it's this story continuing, or something completely new, I look forward to reading more by the author.

great story

the story was great. but the narrator... this woman is FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC!!! I found this story because I was looking for more of her work. she brings a story to life so well. puts emotions in in all the right ways. the fact that I really like this story was a bonus

Terrific, But Darker Sequel

I loved the first book, and was anxious about this one but living up to the standard. But, while the story is safer and darker, I just loved the way that Jane and Katherine grow ... apart and together. While the story is fiction, the portrayals of the ravages of racism and trauma are realistic. A resolution was satisfying and light enough to leave a sweet taste in my mouth.

Love this series

The addition of a second narrator helped to support the dynamic and varying perspectives of Jane and Katherine 🖤. A fitting end!

The best characters

Love both books. So exciting and really awesome readers.
I really like that this is not another white man fighting zombies book.

Made Me Enjoy a Zombie Story

I usually don’t like horror and especially not Zombies, but I love this story. Jane and Kate are the best! There friendship makes me laugh and cry and love them both.

“I ain’t gonna be part of his science experiment!”

The premise of Deathless Divide (2020), the sequel to Justina Ireland’s 19-century alternate history zombie apocalypse race relations novel Dread Nation (2018), is that during a Civil War battle for some unexplained reason the dead rose up and started attacking, eating, and turning the living. To kill the “shamblers” you must generally remove their heads, hence the preference among experienced fighters for bladed weapons (though they’re also proficient with firearms). African Americans are made to do the dirty work of putting down the dead, while whites stay out of harm’s way, though when an entire town is overrun by a horde, no one is safe. The southern and eastern states have been lost. With its protective mountains and deserts, California has resisted the worst of the shambler plague, but “Eventually, the dead will come walking.”

The narrator Jane McKeene, now about 18, explains that at Miss Preston’s School for Combat for Negro Girls near Baltimore, she and Katherine Deveraux started off enemies, but that their adventures, culminating in an escape from the white nationalist “utopia” Summerland when it was overrun by a shambler horde at the end of the first novel, have made them best friends. Jane thinks she’s getting her ex-boyfriend Jackson back, until a shambler ambush and a past marriage destroy her hopes. Acompanying them are Jackson's little sister, an orphan boy, and some prostitutes. Jane also reveals her attraction to Gideon Carr, a white scientist-inventor. Jane et al decide to try for the Great Plains African American town of Nicodemus, where they hope to find some Miss Preston alumni. Jane’s ultimate goal is California, where she hopes her mother and aunt are waiting for her in an idyllic community called Haven.

While Dread Nation was narrated solely by Jane, here she and Katherine take turns narrating chapters. Their different voices, personalities, and experiences complement each other. Their chapter epigraphs come from Shakespeare (Jane) and the Bible (Katherine). Jane is more violent, reckless, and down to earth, Katherine more ladylike, careful, and polite. With her golden skin, blond hair, and blue eyes, Katherine can pass for white, while Jane is obviously black. While Jane has loved both boys and girls, Katherine has never needed a lover. One moment, she’ll say, “A good pair of swords is always the best accessory,” the next, “I take a deep breath, enjoying the reassuring grip of the corset on my ribs before I set out.” Katherine fills us in on Jane killing the hateful sheriff of Summerland at the end of the first book.

Ireland writes other interesting characters, like Jackson, who becomes a resentful but helpful haint haunting Jane; Gideon, who is driven to continue his experiments on living (especially black) people as he tries to perfect his anti-shambler serum so he can (he hopes) make up for causing the deaths of untold people; and Daniel Redfern, a Native American “survivor” who won’t risk his neck to help anyone.

The first part of the novel takes place in the Great Plains, the second in California, morphing into a hardboiled zombie western, as Jane’s character transforms from the Angel of the Crossroads (shambler scourge) to the Devil’s Bride (human bounty hunter), saying things like “Killing a person who needs it is like making a garden. It's hard work but the result is pleasurable.” Gone are the days when she worries about crossing the line from survivor to killer. Katherine also changes in the second part, determining never again to pass for white, abandoning her corset, and becoming a shrewder observer of men. Jane’s part-two chapters start with epigraphs from books of sensational “true stories” of the “wilding west,” Katherine’s with quotations from travelers’ accounts of the wonders of California.

Ireland imagines a fallen world of misery, loss, and death for all, and not only because of the zombies. At least as deadly for people of color are the pervasive white supremacy, racism, and discrimination. In San Francisco Katherine finds the same “greed and exclusion” as everywhere else in America, but here it's the Chinese running things, the whites paying for their labor and goods, and the negroes getting burnt out of their neighborhoods. Black people are “illegal” in the Oregon Territory, and criminals only get prices on their heads for crimes against whites. The absence of justice for black people in the novel’s alternate history reflects today’s USA.

The sketchy steampunk elements introduced in the first novel remain underdeveloped here, with cameos by a “pony” (a steam-driven ironclad wagon) and a limited railgun. Ireland should leave such things out. And there are some unconvincing, lazy plot developments when for suspense Jane and or Katherine get snuck up on and put in tight spots there’s no way they would permit, given their trained, experienced, and capable characters. And the climax is too quick and tidy after so many chapters leading up to it.

Nonetheless, the novel is exciting, moving, relevant, and funny. It’s exciting to read a book in which strong, capable, and charismatic young heroines of color have adventures and pursue justice in dangerous, unjust world. LGBTQ people are fully represented, too, even as Ireland resists de rigueur YA love triangles. And the writing is enjoyable, as in the following lines.

“You and this corset are a recipe for disaster.”
“My voice is as flat as the Great Plains themselves.”
“God aint’ got nothing to do with this. It is the province of man.”
“A mouthy Negro girl without any kind of sense? I am the world's most perfect scapegoat.”

One sign of the strong writing is that, although audiobook reader Jordan Cobb irritatingly overread the overwrought Song of Wraiths and Ruin, she was OK reading Katherine’s half of this novel (though her “refined” English voice is egregious). When Katherine’s chapters read by Cobb feature Jane’s dialogue and when Jane’s chapters read by the *prime* Bahni Turpin feature Katherine’s, it’s not as jarring as it could be in less careful hands.

The themes re race, revenge, survival, and identity are potent, the resolution satisfying, and Jane and Katherine appealing, so if Ireland writes a third book set in the world of Dread Nation and Deathless Divide, I’ll read it.

so glad the story continued after dread Nation

another awesome ride, loved the characters the story The narrator's I would definitely recommend this book as well

A wild ride

This is every bit as good as thd first book in this series but quite different in tone.
I loved it.